p. 19Ladies and Gentlemen,—
Last month we had the case of Joseph. I now invite you to the history of Moses. I will not insult you by supposing you will doubt that there was such a man as Moses. There is no man of antiquity whose historic reality is so unquestionable as that of Moses. A whole nation, and a whole literature extant upon earth at the present moment, are the undeniable monuments of his existence—buttressed in the most massive manner by the history of 3,000 years. A question might be raised as to Confucius or Brahma: but the case of Moses is not debatable. He is one of the inexpugnable things of the earth.
That Moses became the leader of Israel—that he brought them out of Egypt—and that he gave them a law to which they acknowledge allegiance to this day, are elementary facts in the consideration of his case. The question which I submit to your attention this month is—How came he to occupy this position p. 20 and perform this work? We have the Bible account. That account it endorsed by all the prophets and by Christ whom they foretold. If that account is true, God was the direct and visible Author of the work of Moses, and therefore the whole Bible is true; for prove God in one part, and you prove it in all. If that account is not true, Moses is a liar, and the prophets and Christ are impostors. Ladies and Gentlemen, to which of these hypotheses will you give your sanction? There is no middle ground, as you must be persuaded on a full study of the case.
I propose briefly to indicate inherent evidences that the account is true, and that no other process than one in which God took visible part can account for the national origin of the Jews and the ascendancy which Moses acquired among them. Take legend out of history, and the history is left. Take God out of the story of Moses, and the story would be gone. You would require another story, and you would have to invent it. You could not construct it out of the materials supplied in the Bible narrative.
First of all, Moses flies Egypt on slaying an Egyptian. He leaves not only in disgrace but in danger. Such a thing must have happened before it could come to be recorded, for no motive but the truth of it could lead to such a record. What led Moses to do this deed? Sympathy for the Hebrews; for the Egyptian was murderously assaulting a Hebrew. But why should he sympathize with the Hebrew? You may say, Because he was one himself. This is not a sufficient explanation. It is not human nature for a courtier, elevated from a slave race, to identify himself with that race on merely racial grounds. Paul’s explanation of his action is that “he chose rather to suffer affliction with the p. 21 people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season” (Heb. xi. 25): and Stephen’s, that “he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God, by his hand would deliver them” (Acts vii. 25); an explanation which the whole subsequent career of Moses agrees with. This explanation looks back to the promises that God had made that He would deliver Israel from Egypt.
Fleeing from Egypt, Moses takes employment as a flock-master in Midian, and remains away for forty years, during which Israel is sorely oppressed, as is now the case in Russia. Now, some strong circumstances must have transpired to bring about such a change as confessedly took place in the position of Moses after this. From a quiet pastoral life, he is placed at the head of a nation, whom he brings victoriously out of Egypt. What is the connecting link between the two points? Did Moses’ plan the rescue of his people? There is not only no record of this: there is the record that he refused to undertake their deliverance when the angel appeared to him in the flaming bush, and only yielded in the presence of the Divine anger (Ex. iv. 13, 14). Consider this: if true, God is in it. If not, how in the world came it to be written to the discredit of Moses that he was unwilling to undertake the deliverance of his people? Ladies and Gentlemen, it is incredible on any hypothesis. Again, did Moses organize Israel into an army and victoriously fight the Egyptians? This would have been the human way of rescuing an oppressed race from their oppressors. The Israelities were rescued: was it not in this way? If so, there is no record of it, and surely there would have been a record if such a thing had happened: for afterwards when Israel approached the land of p. 22 promise, we have the record of battles between Moses and certain kings of the Amorities. Why not a record of battles in Egypt if there were any? If it was the military prowess of Moses that delivered Israel from Pharaoh, and if the Bible history is a merely human history, would it not have been so represented? Instead of this, both the circumstances and the record preclude such having taken place. The Hebrews were a slave race. They were under task masters. They could not be organized as an army. There was no opportunity for Moses to organize them, and even if such had been possible, they had no heart for it. Their burdens were aggravated as the result of Moses’s advent on the scene. “They hearkened not to (the assurances of) Moses for anguish of spirit.” They said, “Let us alone than we may serve the Egyptians” (Ex. vi. 9; xiv. 12).
How came a helpless slave race to be extricated from such a position? There is an account of how it was done: and I strongly submit, Ladies and Gentlemen, that you can neither reject the account nor take God out of it without doing violence to reason. The account is that Moses, with his brother Aaron, having presented himself at the Court of Pharaoh, with this message: “The God of the Hebrews hath met us. . . . Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let My people go, that they may hold a feast unto Me in the wilderness;” informed him that his refusal would be visited by devastating plagues that would break his power and force Israel out of his hands. The account further is that Pharaoh did refuse, and that the plagues were sent one after another, and that on the occurrence of the last, the death of the first born in every house in Egypt, p. 23 Pharaoh not only consented to their departure, but hurried them out of the country; and that, after an interval, in which he recovered his spirits, he pursued them, and was overwhelmed in the Red Sea into which he had followed them through an opening miraculously made in the waters for their escape.
This is the only account we have of Israel’s national advent on the historic scene. It is an official account. It is the account of Moses, as authenticated by Christ and by every generation of Israelites from the days of Moses to the present. You cannot reject it without in effect declaring that Moses was a liar. You cannot reject it with any reason stronger than your private opinion that it could not be true. You cannot remove the Divine and the miraculous from it without destroying the story altogether, and you cannot supply us in its place with any rational explanation of the undoubted historic fact that the nation that has given us Christ and the Bible, marched out of Egypt a rabble of slaves under a flock-master in the teeth of the armed resistance of the most powerful military monarchy of the world.
I submit to you, ladies and gentlemen, that you are bound to receive this account: that you cannot really get out of it: that its mere existence as a story, in all the surrounding circumstances of the case, is an evidence of its truth, which it only requires logical capacity and a full information to perceive.